Purpose - The authors exploit the analogy between journal peer review and information retrieval in order to quantify some imperfections of journal peer review. Design/methodology/approach - The authors define fallout rate and missing rate in order to describe quantitatively the weak papers that were accepted and the strong papers that were missed, respectively. To assess the quality of manuscripts the authors use bibliometric measures. Findings - Fallout rate and missing rate are put in relation with the hitting rate and success rate. Conclusions are drawn on what fraction of weak papers will be accepted in order to have a certain fraction of strong accepted papers. Originality/value - The paper illustrates that these curves are new in peer review research when interpreted in the information retrieval terminology.